#3 In addition to your solo work, you have done a number of large-scale collaborations over the years with a diverse range of musicians-What do you find most rewarding about collaborative work? Most frustrating? Any memorable moments you’d like to share from collaborations past or present?
SR: The collaborations with Vidna Obmana are by far the most powerful and inspiring because of our friendship and the time we have spent in the studio and on stage and just the basic shared ideals. The collaborations with Jorge Reyes and Suso Saiz –Suspended Memories provided some might fun times recording in Madrid one week, flying to Osnabruck Germany the next for the Klangart festival and completing Earth island in a Farm house concerted into a fine studio. The atmosphere with Jorge and Suso was always a fascinating mix. The sessions were always in the spirit of fun and good humour.
There are so many memories, a collection of dream like images that linger… hummm better left that way.
Some of your most successful collaborations are those with Vidna Obmana with whom you recorded several albums. What is it that you contribute to these collaborative albums and what is your opinion on these albums?
SR: True collaborations, the ones that I am interested in exploring are based on more than musical ambitions. The richness comes though mutual respect and the understanding of common desires and spiritual pursuits, both in the music and in life. If the collaboration spirit has real strength its deeper expressions made real by the process itself over time, more than just a few CD’s. My work with Vidna Obmana over the years has reflected this in a powerful way and our recent chapter in going to the edge in the concert setting has been another exciting discovery of understanding we share in the studio and in life. Its really impossible to divide up the elements we contribute, its really an uncanny way of working, not logical at all, wether we are in the same room or a few thousand miles apart some kind of energy is felt and tapped into when we commence to work on music specify for our collaborations. For me Well of Souls and InnerZone hold a high place in my life.
When you collaborate with other artists such as Robert Rich or Vidna Obmana, are the pieces actually composed in some way, or improvised?
SR: A combination of both, if we start a piece in the same physical space then its us playing off each other improvising and feeling the sounds merge. If it’s a long distance collaborating then we will send track to each other. With Vidna Obmana our collaborative understanding is so strong that when we send tracks back and forth it seems like we are truly in the same space together creating in the moment. I find the best mode is where we get together and create a lot of material together then return to our own space and then take the time to experiment on the original track form our session. We might pass these back and fother several time se before its complete.
Do you feel that by working with different people, it helps you develop different creative elements within you?
SR: Yes indeed, if it’s a true collaboration, it lets you focus on strengths of each other, combining things you might not consider, being open to another point of view, exchange different approaches, and just sharing some quality time for a brief period in the Timeroom.
Some of the productions – collaborations with newcomers my role as a mentor kicks in with the various parameters of producing and releasing music. In anycase the environment of the Timeroom along with the feeling outside sets the mood that does wonder for the creative process all the way around.
Do you prefer collaborations to solo work?
SR: I always prefer solo work at the end of the day. Since have no brother or sisters I grew up being comfortable as more of a lone coyote. The collaborative impulses have naturally given me the feeling of a kind of brother or sister relationship to some degree but really in this life I learned I prefer to go my own way after a few weeks of collaboration. Time to head back out into the desert, alone, again.
Is there anyone that that you haven’t worked with that you’d like to collaborate with in the future?
SR: This might sound strange but its Robert Plant, I would love to create sound worlds within his soulful tracks.
Trance Sprits is your latest collaboration project which includes Jeffry Fayman and Robert Fripp. Can you tell me more about this project and how did Fripp get involved in this project. 2 years ago he collaborated with Fayman for Temple in the Clouds and now the 2 of them are working with you. What is your opinion on the records he did with Eno during the seventies (No Pussyfooting and Evening Star)
SR: Jeffrey Fayman got in touch with me a few years ago first as enthusiast of my music and second to introduce the Temple in the Clouds CD in progress to me, asking if I could help him find a label. My first thought was Projket and the owner Sam Rosenthal. Sam was a fan of the Fripp & Eno releases so he was happy to put this one out. I remember the first moment I heard No Pussyfooting when it came out in the 70’s, another pivotal moment for me in terms of hearing a new paradigm. In that same original package Jeff first sent there was a collection of trance drumming he included with me in mind. These tracks simple blew me away on first listen. Jeffrey creates music for the big Hollywood films so cinematic impact with in his music is clear. Beyond all the technology he works with his command of pure African drumming. He often plays in drum circles and with African groups as the only non-African player. Over the next year he would sit in on several of my concerts adding percussion. The spirit of our live interaction mixed with the style of trance percussion he first sent became the blueprint for the Trance Spirits release. Soon Jeffrey and I started to get together working on it when we could. Eventually the idea to include Robert Fripp came up. Since he is a good friend with Jeff it was a natural for us include him. He essentially created several hours of soundscapes for us to pull from. At this same time I was starting to do more series experiments with my own approach to guitar loops, Since I was spending a lot of time with the tracks, I found myself creating many guitar based soundscapes that grew directly out of the trance tracks. In the end we used Roberts soundscapes on a 3 tracks. These offered a powerful contrast to my approach.
Our aim with Trance Sprits that starts the stratosphere and ends in the stratosphere, maintaining a state of focus and energy, the trance state here is one of being alert, fully alive with a laser like focus, maybe like the energy of the large jungle cat on the move.
What is your opinion on the current electronic music trends?
SR: I have to admit I don’t’ know where to start in terms of the current electronic music trends, it just appears so overwhelming now. It seems the dance DJ element has the biggest shadow cast over the world in the most visible way and also with how the equipment is targeted towards. For me the ongoing that lives outside of trends, the place I feel I inhabit is about doing it for the love of sound, this is what really speaks to me. It’s up to those making the music to meet the challenge of having all the tools anyone could ever ask for and then having something say that is connected to the bigger picture and comes from a genuine place. I have always seen this indefinable sound-art as an outlet for the innately talented that not too long ago might have never found their way to express these worlds. This means more and more people like myself that did not fit nto the conformity of academic demands or give into the imprisonment of creativity in the conventional matrix of the music business can create their own way with true independence. I feel the best qualities of this music are evolving in exciting ways, in all the sub genres. It’s a moot point to say the boundaries are dissolving; it’s a big boiling pot of artist humanity by now. With in that boiling pot you will get the MacDonald’s hamburgers and you will get real, genuine, authentic food for the soul. I say just keep stirring it, adding new ingredients and trying new recipes while staying connected to the soulful qualities that move one to create in the first place. The good stuff will rise and the rest will fall away like it always has. One thing for sure is there will be more of both extremes.
Please tell us something about future projects and your activities which are to follow. In which direction do you see your music going?
SR: I have just returned home after doing concerts and creating new live music for the last 7 months. In November a 2 CD set “All is now” will be coming from all of this. Disk one will be one concert (Sedona Az.) Disk two will be a collection of peak points for various concerts all melted into one hybrid set. Also in November “Day Out Of Time” soundtrack to the DVD “Time of the Earth” will be released on my Timeroom label.
From now through the rest of the year the focus will be on Mystic Chords & Sacred Spaces.” This will be going into the centre of the expansive, harmonic landscapes and soundworlds I am most drawn towards It will be absent of all rhythmic elements. I have been working on it on and off for over a year now. Above and beyond all of this just being home after all the travel, to be back in the land of slow heat is all I can ask for. From here the direction for what is to come will make itself known soon enough.